“When an estimated 400 million people tuned in to the 1966 World Cup final between England and West Germany at Wembley, many of them watching a game live on television for the first time, it changed the way we remember football. Before the 1954 tournament, World Cups weren’t televised at all. If you wanted to know how teams played, you bought a newspaper the next day and read a column about it by some cigar-chomping sportswriter in a three-piece suit. Now fans could follow along for themselves in fuzzy black and white: And here comes Hurst, he’s got — some people are on the pitch, they think it’s all over… It is now! …”
NYT/ATH (Video)

The Total Football era’s transformation of the sport can be seen in the data